Program Unit Annual Meeting 2023

Liberation Theologies Unit

Call for Proposals

Title: “Global Solidarities and the Margins”

The Liberation Theologies Program Unit invites proposals that examine this year’s presidential theme, “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Margins” through the lens of global solidarities and the margins. We invite proposals that engage questions such as: How do the technologies and industries of violence impact diverse practices of solidarity and liberation? What does it look like to commit to the liberation of others and the environment? How are marginalized groups engaging in intersectional acts of solidarity? 

 

Proposals on this theme might consider the following:

Imperial Violence Beyond the Eurocentric Lens 

Structural Violence in the Everyday (the ways that our daily living are occasions of/for violence)

Successes and Failures of Intersectional Practice

The Creation of the Margins

Global Technologies of Violence and Bias in Technologies of Violence

Whose Violence/Whose Nonviolence

Border Crossings and the Violence of/in the borders

Difference between Nonviolence and Peacemaking

Ecological Violence and Slow Violence

Violence, Property, and Radical Environmentalism

The Cost of Paradise

The Political Production of the Peripheries

The Margins as a site of Liberation 

The unit will be hosting a session during the June 2024 AAR Virtual Meeting. This call for proposals is for both Virtual-June 2024 and San Diego-November 2024. 

 

CO-SPONSORED SESSIONS FOR SAN DIEGO-NOVEMBER 2024

  • “The Legacies of Enrique Dussel, Jorge Pixley, and Franz Hinkelammert”

The SBL’s Latino/a/e and Latin American Biblical Interpretation and Poverty in the Biblical World program units, together with the AAR’s Liberation Theologies and Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society program units, will host a session that honors three leading figures of liberation theology who passed away last year: Enrique Dussel, George/Jorge Pixley, and Franz Hinkelammert. We invite proposals that engage their intellectual legacies, especially by considering their impact on contemporary religious thought and biblical interpretation; the relevance of their ideas for addressing current social and economic crises; intersections between theology, philosophy, and biblical studies in their work; comparative analyses of their contributions and methodologies; and interpretations of scriptural texts that employ their thought to examine the texts’ economic and political dimensions and implications.

 

  • “Theologies of Liberation in the Middle East”

This session co-sponsored with the Middle Eastern Christianity Group explores how a growing number of Christian theologians in the Middle East have deployed liberation theology as a means of understanding their fraught political, social, and economic contexts across the region. We invite contributions addressing the strengths and difficulties in such theological engagement and engaging specific social, political, and economic contexts in the region. Proposals from scholars and theologians of/from the Middle East are especially encouraged.

 

Co-sponsored session with Religion and Disability Studies: A review panel on the book Disability Ethics and Preferential Justice: A Catholic Perspective by Mary Jo Iozzio. Panelists will critically engage the book's merits as a primer on disability ethics and an example of mature Catholic reflection on disability and liberation, as well as its potential impact on other theologies of disability and liberation. This session is pre-arranged and closed, and we will not be accepting proposals for it.

The Liberation Theologies Program Unit asks “What does liberation theology mean in and for the twenty-first century?” We encourage crossover dialogue — between contexts and between disciplines — and reflection on the implications of liberationist discourse for the transformation of theology as a whole, both methodologically and theologically.

Statement of Purpose

This Unit asks “What does liberation theology mean in and for the twenty-first century?” We encourage crossover dialogue — between contexts and between disciplines — and reflection on the implications of liberationist discourse for the transformation of theology as a whole, both methodologically and theologically.

Steering Member Mail Dates
Iskander Abbasi alex.abbasi8@gmail.com - View
Ali Lutz alilutz@gmail.com - View
Alina Jabbari alin.jabbari@gmail.com - View
Francisco Garcia, Vanderbilt University francisco.j.garcia… - View
Sunder John Boopalan johnboopalan@gmail.com - View
Nixon Cleophat ncleophat@gmail.com - View
Santiago H. Slabodsky santiago.slabodsky… - View
Review Process: Participant names are visible to chairs but anonymous to steering committee members until after final acceptance/rejection